Why can't we have a better media, pt. 11 billion and two

by: Eric B.

Fri Jul 13, 2012 at 10:10:54 AM EDT

Most everyone is at least aware that yesterday a bunch of stuff about Bain and Willard blew up that called into question whether a personal work experience mostly just profiting from destroying companies and firing people in the name of profitability, but his ability to successfully to tell his personal narrative in a way that is basically truthful. In response, someone at the Washington Post said that the allegations would be more damning, if they weren't coming from a Democratic appointee.

I know there are those of you who think we need to ignore the fact-checkers, and just paying attention to them gives them credibility. I disagree. Folks like Kessler have proven themselves incapable of logic or reason, and bow down to the altar of some sort of fictional balance. We can’t ignore these charlatans and protectors of the lazy media status quo. Their credibility, however unearned, must be destroyed. Every time this idiot opens his mouth and spews nonsense, you have got to fight back, and I’m not going to rest until this jackass gets his act together or is as much a laughingstock as Bill O’Reilly. A smart guy I kind of like a couple of years ago exhorted that we should “argue with them and get in their face!” I agree.

Our media is failing us, and sitting back and ignoring that isn’t going to make things better. Things will not change until nonpartisan clowns like Kessler are knocked off their perch and relegated to teaching “journalism” at some backwater community college in Alabama. I feel bad for those kids going to school in Alabama, but they are taking one for team America.

It isn't just the "fact checkers." It's every editorial writer who acts as if facts are relative things to point of view. It is no less a fact because a Democratic appointee says that the sky is blue than a Republican appointee, or vice versa. Too many editorial writers and columnists, however, think that it is, or subscribe to its stupider, more obtuse cousin, the notion that "both sides are equally guilty." It all boils down to one thing, a refusal to write facts and to place said facts before other, less important priorities.

We've seen this a lot over the years, and most especially at the Detroit Free Press, where they appear to have bought into the silly idea that, despite being positioned for direct access to decision makers and the reality that they're paid to do research and write about it, they exist to start conversations and not lead or guide them. That is, they simply put something out there, and let everyne else sort it out.

Every time we see a Brian Dickerson write that it's okay to believe in climate change now that we've identified a tough guy who believes in it, every time we see a Ron "Booggerman" Dzwonkowski write that liberal policy ideas are the best suited to something but that what's really important is that both sides negotiate like adulds (even when it's painfully obvious that one is being less adult than the other), every time a Barb Arrigo allows the attorney general to explain one lie with another lie (which coincidentally contradicts his first lie) and go unchallenged or unpunished, you are seeing a media outlet fail to do its basic job. You are also seeing the enabling of bad faith policy making, and/or policy based on an incomplete or inaccurate picture of the facts, which is the first best step towards policy failure.